Sophie Littlefield - Aftertime

“Okay, you walk the bike. Go in front of me. You-” she gestured at Cass with the gun “-behind him. I’ll be right here, don’t worry about that, just keep going.”

She slid the unopened backpack onto her shoulders and Smoke touched her arm briefly before starting to push the bike by the handlebars.

The guard walked behind them. Their footsteps made an echo on the quiet, dark streets. In the shadows of the stadium, the souvenir stands and bathrooms were mere ruins, leaning on their frames. Ahead were streets, restaurants, bars, a fire station. More parking. Beyond that, apartment buildings and houses.

Cass flashed again on the day she had been here with her dad, the shouts of the scalpers and men spilling out of a tavern, another haggard man selling t-shirts and ball caps and pennants. Her dad bought her a little red teddy bear with a white shirt with “Miners” printed in sparkling silver script, and she clutched it close, aware that she was too old for a teddy bear, but loving it anyway.

When they rounded the side of the stadium, a vast fenced lot appeared ahead, lit up with strings of lights and the occasional bright spotlight. Cass drew in her breath at the sight. How were they powering all those lights? What was this place?

“Clear,” the woman behind her yelled and from the darkness under the stadium a man called back.

“Who you got?”

“Couple of sheep. When are you off?”

“Two,” the man replied. Cass saw him then, standing with his legs slightly apart, a gun like the other guard’s slung across his torso. “Rockets?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’m covering for Baldy, pulled a double.”

The man grunted and they passed by. So there were guards ringing the entire stadium, Cass guessed. But a man? Did this mean that they had been wrong? Were men in the Convent, and if so, what if it wasn’t a cult at all? Not that men couldn’t be in cults, but the tone of these two-joking, irreverent, undeniably tough-didn’t strike Cass as steeped in religious zealotry.

And what were they guarding against, anyway? She’d seen no signs of Beaters, no evidence of nests or recent kills. The Convent itself was quiet.

They approached the fenced lot, Cass blinking in the lights. Chain link stretched ten, a dozen feet high, razor wire twisted along the top, an entire block lit up. And tents-tents! People milling about, sitting around a fire, clustered near a makeshift bar, drinking.

“Don’t slow down,” the guard said behind them. “Plenty of time to look around when you get in.”

“What is that?” Cass asked.

“That’s civilization, sweetheart.”

“Are the people in there prisoners?” Smoke demanded.

The guard laughed shortly. “Ain’t anyone a prisoner,” she said. “It’s just the little place we call home. No charge to come on in, and you can buy just about anything you want, for a price. There’s people who have more or less than others, that’s about it. Dor’s got the most, so it’s his thing. You’ll meet him soon enough.”

Cass wasn’t sure she had heard right. “Did you say Dor? ” she demanded.

“Yeah, Dor MacFall. Sounds made-up, right? Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t.”

Dor MacFall. Cass’s mind was suddenly full of the image of Sammi, that day before she left, hope and longing etched on her pretty young features. Find my dad , she’d said. All I want is for him to know I’m okay .

“What is he, a-a-” Mayor of this little squatters’ town?

But the guard was done talking. When they approached an opening in the fence, a complicated gate was opened by a heavy, broad-faced woman with hair so short Cass thought it must have been buzzed with a razor. The guard ignored them and made small talk with the large woman and a second guard, a lanky man with long sandy hair. She emptied the items she’d confiscated from her pockets and handed them over along with the backpack and the gun. The man set them on a long bare table then sat down and started sorting through the contents of the pack. “See you at Rockets,” she said as she turned to go, not bothering with goodbyes for Cass and Smoke.

“I’m Faye. Park that over here,” the new guard said as she motioned them in. Smoke pushed the bike into a corner of the encampment where a small rider tractor was parked next to a half-dozen bicycles. “Y’all set here a minute while we inventory all this.”

“I’m going to need some assurance I’ll be getting that back,” Smoke said as he and Cass took seats on a long low picnic bench.

Faye didn’t even look up from her task.

“Did you know him?” Cass asked Smoke. “Dor MacFall? Sammi’s dad?”

Smoke shook his head. “They split up before it got really bad. He moved out back before they cut off the power. But that little girl never stopped talking about him. She made me promise if I ever saw him I’d tell him she was all right.”

“She made me promise the same thing.”

“Yeah, well…guess now we’ll have the chance.”

“What are the odds? I mean, she said he was in Sykes-”

“Sykes probably doesn’t exist anymore,” Smoke said. “Not in any meaningful way. Anyone with any brains would have got the hell out. Town that small, you’re not going to be able to get enough folks together to set up much of a defense.”

“Yes, but why here?”

“Why not here?” Smoke shrugged. “Once he heard about the Convent…he’s a sharp guy, he saw an opportunity, he jumped on it. Knew there’d be a lot of traffic through here, so he built himself a combination general store and strip club and KOA campground, is what it looks like. With a hell of a security detail.”

“Sammi said he was a businessman-”

“That what she said?” Smoke laughed without humor. “You know what his business was? Internet marketing. But not the kind the FTC approved of-you know what I’m saying? The Siege was probably the best thing to happen to MacFall-from what his ex told me, they were closing in on him. He was looking at a few years in prison.”

“And now he’s like the kingpin around here,” Cass said bitterly, even though she knew her disgust was only partly for the man who Sammi idolized. It had taken her two decades to realize that Silver Dollar Haverford was really never going to come back and be the father she’d needed him to be. “Still, seems like a coincidence that we’d run into him.”

“I don’t know… It’s a small world now, Cass.”

Faye had lined up their items: water bottles, kaysev cakes, a pair of blades. She whistled when she saw the packets of Tylenol and two Balance Bars, and separated them out. “You know how it works, right?”

“Uh, no,” Smoke said. “We’re new around here. Which you might have gathered when we drove up on that thing.”

If Faye caught the irony in his voice, she didn’t let on. Instead she wrote something on a legal pad.

“Seriously,” Cass tried. “All we know is that the Convent-well, we don’t know anything, except that I’m looking for-”

She stopped herself. She had been about to say that she was looking for her daughter, for Ruthie. But caution seemed like a good idea, and instead she said, “Someone,” and left it at that.

“Someone in the Convent or out here?” the man said in a pleasant enough voice. He offered his hand, and it was warm and strong. “I’m George, by the way.”

“Inside, I think.”

He frowned. “Well, good luck with that. For now, the first thing I got to tell you is that you’re safe here. From Beaters, anyway.”

Cass looked at the chain-link fence doubtfully. George followed her line of vision and shook his head. “No, I mean, there’s no Beaters in town anymore.”

“You killed them all? ”